Service efficiency judgments can override and even reverse cultural prejudice about clients

Evidence

Other conceptions of clients appear to enhance feelings about job accomplishments even when they seem to run counter to prevailing social norms. Consider the case of social service workers who would rather be assigned to child abuse than to child neglect cases. Although child abuse is a particularly unattractive crime the anomaly appears to be explained by the greater likelihood that child abuse cases will respond to intervention, while the typically passive child neglector is less likely to respond to social workers’ assistance. 27 It would appear that clientele segmentation is usually consistent with prevailing social norms, but it is not wholly explained by them. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1143

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: why caseworkers prefer child abusers over neglecters — administrative discretion reshuffles moral hierarchies that pure cultural prejudice cannot explain.
• XREF: connects to: Dispute resolution quality may be stratified by social class — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 1185; Racism shapes which clients frontline staff deem worthy and how practice differentiates them — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1308

Broader Connections

• Racism shapes which clients frontline staff deem worthy and how practice differentiates them #complicates (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1308